Google announced Friday that it bought FeedBurner, a Chicago company focused on distributing digital media through a technology known as RSS, or Really Simple Syndication.

The move, which had been widely expected, will provide Google yet another way to match digital advertising with digital content.

“We think this will be a win for users, for publishers and for advertisers on the Internet,” Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, said in a conference call with reporters.

The terms of the deal, widely rumored to be at a price of about $100 million, were not disclosed.

While RSS is far from a mainstream technology, Internet observers say it is being used by more and more people who want fresh news and blog posts delivered to their inboxes.

Dick Costolo, chief executive and co-founder of FeedBurner, said more than 430,000 publishers use the technology to provide 67 million feeds to subscribers each day. E-mail providers such as Yahoo have made RSS feeds available thorough regular inboxes.

FeedBurner publishers range from one-person blogs to professional news organizations like USA Today and Reuters. Costolo said the feeds also are being used by retailers and travel sites to alert consumers to special deals.

“FeedBurner has seemed the clear leader in this growing area, so this definitely helps give Google a new edge,” said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land.

One downside of RSS for publishers has been that people who used RSS readers did not see the advertising placed on the publishers’ Web pages.

By inserting advertising into RSS feeds, FeedBurner helps publishers keep making money. In addition, FeedBurner provides information to publishers about who is reading their material, which is valuable for marketing purposes.

Ellen Siminoff, chief executive of Efficient Frontier, a search-engine marketing company, said there is not a huge amount of interest in RSS ads right now, but she said the area is poised for growth.

“Google is yet again being aggressive and looking at where the market is going, not where the market is today,” Siminoff said. She said RSS subscribers could be desirable for advertisers because they are actively choosing to receive certain content instead of randomly browsing.

Siminoff said the technology also would help Google target advertising to individuals reading about particular subjects.

Costolo described the match with Google as “almost too perfect,” but he said it was too early too know how his company’s technology would be integrated into Google. He said his 30-person staff would remain in Chicago.

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